MAP03: Arachnotron Arrival (Ancient Aliens)

MAP03: Arachnotron Arrival is the third map of Ancient Aliens. It was designed by Paul DeBruyne (skillsaw) and uses the music track "Depth Charge," composed by Stuart Rynn (stewboy). The par time is 3:15.

Essentials
You start in a room with an ominous warning about the arachnotrons in the level, so ignore them as you progress. The exit is blocked by a lone zombieman, so kill him and get out. To the left is a shotgun and combat armor, which causes two imps to spawn in. To the right is an elevator with more imps behind it. Take the elevator up and deal with the imps, shotgunners, and the demons in the room. Press the switch on the south wall to let two revenants out, with chaingunners in the space behind them. Punch out the revenants with the berserk given to you, and then hit another switch in the room to the east to reveal a teleporter out of the area.

This takes you to a balcony in full view of an arachnotron, and moving off the teleport destination will reveal shotgunners to your left and demons to your right. Deal with them while grabbing the rocket launcher and rockets, then press the switches in their closets to reveal even more enemies, including two revenants. Eventually, the back wall will open up with another teleporter back into the central area.

After exiting the closet and pressing the switch, cross the newly formed bridge to the other side and proceed down the hall. Enter the passage and press the switch, killing more imps and a spectre. Pressing the purple face will reveal more enemies, and entering their room will open even more closets. Grab everything, then head back out the way you came in and down the stairs to a room that just opened up.

Press the switch in here and you'll be locked in with two mancubi and more shotgunners. Another switch reveals a teleporter where the first was, so enter it and return back up the stairs to find yourself at the top with a super shotgun on a ledge. Grab it, then drop down and deal with some revenants before releasing more enemies. After killing them, one of the closets will have the blue key. Open the blue door and enter the room to be sent through two spirit sequences that will deal with the arachnotrons once and for all. Then you can exit.

Secrets

 * 1) In the northeast part of the map after hitting a switch to lower the stairs you crossed earlier, two alcoves to the side have opened. You can see a soul sphere in the southern alcove. To get it, go to the northern alcove and press the purple Incan face. This lowers a wall behind you with an imp and barrels. Head through this new room and another wall lowers with a revenant (only on Ultra-Violence or higher) or a shotgun guy, and you can obtain the soul sphere from there. (sector 590)

Routes and tricks
The button to raise the bridge can be activated much earlier than intended by pressing the wall below the switch immediately after exiting the starting room.

After the bridge has been raised, you can run straight from the bridge to an arachnotron platform. If there is no arachnotron to block the teleporter here, you can take the teleport sequence to the end of the map.

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 10, 2023.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:

Trivia

 * In the comment section under the playthrough of this map on decino's channel, skillsaw shared some info about the creation of the level: